CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

CHAPTER THIRTY





PART I. PARIS




CHAPTER I


In the dining-room of a fine house on the Boulevard Raspail all the
Darbois family were gathered together about the round table, on which
a white oil cloth bordered with gold-medallioned portraits of the line
of French kings served as table cover at family meals.

The Darbois family consisted of Francois Darbois, professor of
philosophy, a scholar of eminence and distinction; of Madame Darbois,
his wife, a charming gentle little creature, without any pretentions;
of Philippe Renaud, brother of Madame Darbois, an honest and able
business man; of his son, Maurice Renaud, twenty-two and a painter, a
fine youth filled with confidence because of the success he had just
achieved at the last Salon; of a distant cousin, the family
counsellor, a tyrannical landlord and self-centered bachelor, Adhemar